NATCHEZ — The No. 8 green at Duncan Park was literally about to fall off a cliff.

But thanks to the combined effort of the Natchez Board of Aldermen and the Adams County Board of Supervisors, the No. 8 green will live to see another day.

Located next to one of the city’s main drainage systems, erosion had eaten away much of the land near the No. 8 green, Duncan Park Golf Course Superintendent Greg Brooking said. Eventually, the erosion would have gotten the green itself.

With the aldermen donating money and the supervisors donating equipment, work began Monday to fix the erosion issue, Brooking said.

“It’s been an ongoing problem,” Brooking said. “Water would come gushing through and eat it up. We diverted the water, but that was only a short-term fix. We’re not construction people out here, we cut grass. We only abated the erosion for a short amount of time.”

Brooking said they’ve been keeping the erosion at bay for 10 to 15 years, but it finally got close enough to the green to where the city felt it needed to take care of the issue.

“We needed an atom bomb, and we were throwing fire crackers at it,” Brooking said. “Now, we have an atom bomb.”

Pipes will go underground to carry water through the park, Brooking said, and an earth berm will push away from the green any surface water that accumulates. The solution was much better than using riprap to try and hold off water, which is what Brooking said Duncan Park was trying to do.

Ward 5 Alderman Mark Fortenbery said once he saw first-hand the problems erosion were causing the No. 8 green, he knew it was time to fix the problem.

“I didn’t realize the hole had gotten that bad until a couple of months ago,” Fortenbery said. “If it wasn’t fixed, the green was going into that hole.”

The City of Natchez set aside $25,000 for the project, and District 1 Supervisor Mike Lazarus offered to donate the county’s equipment to have complete it. With the county helping out, Fortenbery said he estimated that only $5,000-6,000 of the $25,000 set aside was actually being used.

“We had the potential to lose the green, which is probably a ($50,000) to $60,000 deal (to get fixed),” Lazarus said. “Duncan Park is an asset, and we really need to take care of it. The county has the equipment to take care of it, and we were glad to help out.”

Brooking said he was very appreciative of the city and county coming together to get the No. 8 green fixed, and Fortenbery said he was happy to have the county’s help as well.

“I hope everyone knows the county was just as involved as the city,” Fortenbery said. “Anytime we can work together, that’s what we need to do.”

Lazarus said the supervisors understand the city is in the county, and he said the county is available to help the city anytime help is needed.

“We all have to do this together,” Lazarus said. “We didn’t want them to have to pay a contractor when we could do this ourselves.”